Critical Success Factors of Business-managed IT: It Takes Two to Tango

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies critical success factors of Business-managed IT based on case study results. Four groups of critical success factors emerge: (1) general approach to Business-managed IT/Business-managed IT strategy, (2) Business-managed IT project prerequisites/Business-managed IT team, (3) Business-managed IT project execution and outcome, and (4) information technology management for Business-managed IT. The results suggest that bilateral responsibility between the business unit and the IT organization is the most favorable governance option for Business-managed IT.

KEYWORDS:

• Business-managed IT
• Shadow IT
• critical success factors
• IT governance
• application governance

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Klotz

Stefan Klotz is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Business and Economics TU Dresden, Germany. He graduated from the Technical University of Munich and the University of Augsburg with a master’s degree in Finance and Information Management. His research interests focus on IS governance and IS managed in business units, and he is writing his doctoral thesis about Business-managed IT and IT governance.

Markus Westner

Markus Westner is a professor of IT Management at OTH Regensburg, Germany. He is author of several journal articles and conference papers. His teaching and research focuses on IT strategy and IT sourcing. He acts as Associate Editor for Information & Management and the International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management. Before he started his academic career, he worked as a management consultant in a project manager position for one of the world’s leading management consultancies.

Susanne Strahringer

Susanne Strahringer is a professor of Business Informatics especially Information Systems in Trade and Industry, at TU Dresden, Germany. Before joining TU Dresden, she held positions at the University of Augsburg and the European Business School. She graduated from the Darmstadt University of Technology, where she also obtained her PhD and completed her habilitation thesis. She has published in Information & Management, Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, Information Systems Management, and Journal of Information Systems Education, among others. Her research interests focus on IS management, ERP systems, and enterprise modeling.